Personal notice, danger's my stock and trade.
If the job's too tough for you to handle,
you got a job for me, George Valentine.
Write full details.
Standard Oil Company of California,
on behalf of independent Chevron gas stations
and standard stations throughout the West,
invites you to Let George Do It!
Portuguese Cove, another adventure of George Valentine.
Okay, here's your mail, Captain.
Hey, who sends you those letters with all the fancy stamps anyway, Captain?
Madagascar, Port-au-Prince, you got a girl in every port?
My name is Captain LaMago.
Well, sometimes it's spelled with a double...
Oh, here, here, dress patterns for that housekeeper of yours, Mrs. Jewel.
Hey, how about this, from Manila, Captain Alva P...
Give me that!
Put the rest of it in the box, young man.
Hey, what's in it?
Come on, Pop, let's see the mystery, huh?
You're the only guy around here, writes anyplace exciting.
Trouble in the Lonely Hearts Club in Manila?
You look like you lost your last friend.
Hey, maybe some little native girl.
Hey, look out, Pop!
You're a liar!
I'll kill you!
Dear Mr. Valentine, that's exactly what I saw happen.
He struck him, he struck the mailman.
Now, I've lived in Portuguese coal for nearly ten years,
and for all ten of it, I've taken care of Captain LaMago.
I've kept his house and done his cooking for him in the times when he's not out on his tuna boat.
There never was a finer man in all the world, so upright and good and virtuous,
and he's kind, the last person who would ever just flare up and strike anyone like that.
Unless, of course, it was justified, or unless, Mr. Valentine,
unless the poor dear man is in some kind of trouble, some kind of danger.
Oh, yeah, Mr. Valentine, he hit me, but I didn't die from it.
We're only checking up on a story that was told us by...
By Mrs. Jewel? I guess she must have seen it, but...
Well...
But what, my friend? Well what?
She mentioned she saw him crying?
Crying?
Fall all over himself, dusting me off, picking up my mail sack?
You mean the guy was pretty apologetic for what he'd done?
I never saw anything like it.
The old pirate acted like a wrestler who accidentally hurt somebody in the ring.
Ram right unbent like a dishrag.
So, skip the whole thing, will you? Forget it.
Well, I didn't intend to make anything out of it. I'm just curious.
Well, so am I. Maybe that's my trouble.
Look, I'm new on that route.
The boys tell me Captain Lomago's the biggest shot in the whole district.
I mean, he's ahead of one of them old country families, the Patriarch, you know?
Everybody loves him.
Well, I don't want to get into any trouble there.
Besides, maybe he was justified. He explained to me why he did it.
Oh, he did? Well, go on. Why?
Well, all those foreign letters were from some seaman's outfit.
He'd been trying to locate an old buddy, a sailor named Joe Murphy.
Well, Lomago showed me the clipping.
Outfit found out that Joe Murphy died of pneumonia in Manila six months ago.
Oh, so that's it.
Sure. These old fishing families, they're pretty emotional, that's all. See?
This Joe Murphy wasn't a member of the family, was he?
Oh, no, no. Of course not. Only...
What's the matter?
Well, you won't repeat any of this.
He didn't say I shouldn't tell anyone, only...
Only he said, don't mention it to the twins.
The twins? Who are they?
I don't know. Part of that big spread-out tribe, I guess.
I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but...
Well, I was under the impression that one of them was dead, too.
One of the twins was dead?
Yeah, but don't ask me anymore, huh?
Funny place, Portuguese Cove.
Sure. I tell you, sure.
Mrs. Duell, she'll be downstairs pretty quick.
Why worry?
Oh, I'm not worried.
No, you play that very well.
Ha-ha. See? Very well. I think so, Miss.
What's your name?
So Sad.
Hmm? You mean the piece?
No, the name.
I have forgotten what difference is in a name.
So Sad, they all say, so all right.
Since I was a boy. Run errands, do this, do that. So Sad.
It's a joke, you know?
Oh, but you're not a member of the family, the Lemago family.
Oh, but see, who is not?
Only I am not very close. I am the one way out on the limb.
Ha-ha-ha.
Still, I own the boat, the finest boat in the world.
What?
Yes, we all own that boat.
Do you have an idea how much it costs, a deep sea tuna boat?
You own the boat? Is that the one that Captain Lemago...
See? Oh, yes, the whole family owns that.
Maybe I only have ten dollars worth, but is that important?
I can cook on the boat, can't I? I can play music.
I can watch a man happy. I can watch a man die.
What did you say?
Ah, Mr. Valentine. What would you like to hear?
Hello, Angel.
Wait a minute, George. So Sad, what was that you just said?
Dinner will be ready pretty quick. What tune? Any music.
What is it, Brooksy?
Well, he said something about...
He talks all the time. It doesn't mean anything.
Don't even know what you're saying, do you, Nutty?
Ha-ha-ha. Why should I?
Who cares what people say?
Now, some music. The kind you like, Johnny.
Dinner won't be ready unless you get out there.
Oh, but Johnny, I just want...
Go on, go on, go on. Get out of here.
Ha-ha-ha.
Mean, aren't I? Pushing the Nutty around.
A mean, mean guy.
Yes, horrible.
Johnny?
Yeah. Oh, I know.
You know those friends of Mrs. Jewel's? Hello, twice.
Same to you.
Thanks. It fits. I'm the twins.
The twins?
Ha-ha-ha.
That's the trouble with us men in the Lomago family.
We disintegrate like Nutty there.
Hey, clear it up, will you?
Why?
We're just a backwater bunch of suckers
listening to old country music and live the old country way.
Radio? What do you think we are, crazy?
Give me a wet finger in the sight of Polaris any day.
Sure, we can haul in more tuna than anybody in the whole fleet of...
Ha-ha-ha.
All right, all right. I'll get off the soap box.
Want a drink?
No, thanks.
Are you sure you do?
Positive.
Because you're twins?
Forget I ever said it. Forget it.
All right. Maybe you just see double.
Ha-ha-ha.
Never used to touch this stuff, would you believe it?
Six months. That's how long I've been here.
College boy, that's me.
Waste your time studying the scientific wiggles of fish.
Waste your time?
Ha-ha-ha.
Haven't you figured it out?
Haven't you seen it?
It's standing right there on the porch.
Huh?
Sure, sure. See him there?
Pretending he's not listening.
Oh, no, I didn't. The captain.
Watch this.
Hey, hey, old ghost.
Easy, Johnny.
Hey, King of the Sea.
Bidshot.
Good gray uncle.
Ha-ha-ha.
Good evening, Miss Brooks. Mr. Ballentine.
Hello, Captain.
Ha-ha-ha.
He can't hear me, see?
Rolls off his bag like...
Mrs. Jewel asked me to say she'd be down directly.
Oh, thank you.
These people don't understand about little tin-god Skipper.
Tell them who's the only man left in the Lemago family.
Johnny, for heaven's sake.
Tell them about the rights and duties of a captain at sea.
Tell them about the big, strong, upright man who won't let anybody else run anything.
I'll look, Buster.
Let go of me.
It's the only chance I get to talk back when I've had a few drinks under my belt and one in my hand.
So give us a speech, Skipper, on the high moral code of the...
You're yucky.
Heh.
Tough, isn't it?
You ask for it, Buster.
Die!
There.
Forgive me, Miss Brooks.
Now I'll have to mix another drink.
You will not. Not in this house.
Oh, who says so?
I say so.
Let's see who are you about it.
Oh, hey, now, wait a minute, Captain.
You're only half my age. Go on, argue. Hit me!
Cut it out, will you, both of you?
Nah. I'm not going to touch him.
That's all he wants me to do.
You're a sniveling troublemaker like your brother.
I said, Captain, cut it, will you?
Stop! Mrs. Jewel. Stop. Stop those things you're saying.
Yes. Yes.
Good night, all of you.
Captain.
Good night.
Well, I lit the fuse, didn't I?
Oh, Mr. Valentine.
Yeah, yeah, let's change the subject.
Mr. Valentine, I want you to leave the house right now.
What?
Mrs. Jewel, you will...
I had no business getting you here.
It was very wrong of me to interfere.
What shall we?
Go on, Mrs. Jewel.
The captain's been upset like this only because someone died.
What?
Died of pneumonia.
An old dear friend, a sailor named Joe Murphy in Manila.
The captain told me about it.
Mrs. Jewel.
No, be quiet, Johnny.
That's why he struck the mailman.
What if I say that wasn't all it was?
What if I say Joe Murphy was no friend of his? It's a lie.
What?
Joe Murphy was just a sailor on a trip to Mexican waters over a year ago.
Just one guy and a crew of 12.
Johnny, please.
I'll bet they never spoke two words together the kind of a Captain Lomago is.
Upset because his friend is gone.
Then why was Murphy so important?
Johnny, it's none of their affair. And so sad he has dinner ready.
You've been up in my room, haven't you?
That thing you've got there.
Johnny, please, not now.
Give that to me.
No, no, I won't.
George, just a book.
Yeah, a diary, isn't it?
Sure.
His diary.
You mean the captain's?
Mrs. Jewel, I guess you found the same thing I did.
There's an entry in the diary he made in the last day.
But whose diary?
Joe Murphy was so important because he was the only sensible witness to a murder by the great tin god,
the only man left in the family, Captain Lomago.
The diary was Jimmy's, Mr. Valentine.
And who was Jimmy?
A troublemaker like me.
A mutineer, no less.
That's what Joe Murphy supposedly witnessed.
A righteous old swindler was defending himself from a mutineer.
Sure, sure, it was on that trip over a year ago that the disintegration of the male ranks of the family started.
Johnny, don't.
That was the excuse the good man used to stay on top.
The excuse Captain Lomago used for killing my twin brother.
We'll return to tonight's adventure of George Valentine in just a moment.
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And now back to tonight's adventure of George Valentine.
Portuguese Cove, a little old fashioned seacoast village, the home of the Lamego family, the anchorage for the one wealth of their life, the tuna boat they all own together.
For the skipper of the boat, the self-elected head of the family is even stranger than the village itself, Captain Lamego.
You first heard of him because he had struck a mailman, but now you find that a year ago he struck one of his own relatives, one of the twins, and killed him.
Self-defense, that's all I know.
Justifying him.
He was within his rights, he was the captain of a ship at sea.
That doesn't always mean that...
I'm so stupid about these things, and the captain would never let anyone talk about it around the house.
I can imagine.
Yeah, the captain's still doing a lot of thinking about it. At least he tried to get in touch with that witness, that Joe Murphy.
Why?
There were some Panamanian boys on the crew. They didn't even speak English. Everybody understood that Jimmy had tried to use them to cause trouble.
At sea? This mutiny thing that Johnny mentioned?
He doesn't know anything. He was in college at the time, I mean. But Jimmy was a troublemaker. He couldn't stand taking orders from anyone.
He couldn't stand not being able to run the family boat himself. That's what everyone understood. And one night he actually tried to attack the captain.
Mrs. Jewell, wasn't there an investigation at the time?
No, it was a hearing of some sort, Mr. Valentine. There's a record of it. I know the captain has some papers down on the boat, but it was kept very quiet.
Why would anyone doubt the captain's word? And poor Jimmy had been buried at sea.
Hey, I play music for you. You like to hear some music?
No, no, no, no.
When Jimmy died, did you see what happened so sad?
Oh, si, si. Oh, it was terrible.
Can't you remember?
Oh, yes, he died. Yes. Why shouldn't I remember? It was at night. I was peeling the potatoes. Always potatoes.
No, no, look so sad. Just what happened?
Well, everything happened all at once. The captain steps out of his cabin and then I see Jimmy in the dark waiting for him. He'd been drinking. They all say that.
Only maybe Joe Murphy seeing him first because he yells a warning to the captain.
This Jimmy have a knife in one hand and a guff, you know, for the fish in the other. And he yells something I cannot say out loud and he swings his arm.
Only the captain swings first. And the next thing there is Jimmy on the deck with blood where his head hits a cleat.
Si, si. Oh, yes, the captain is very strong.
Self-defense. Justifiable accidental death. Only the diary, Mrs. Jewel. The boy's diary that Johnny had.
Let's see that last entry, the one that made you try to get me off the case.
And it burns me up the way the old goat picks on me all the time. The way he keeps telling people I cause trouble.
The way he keeps dragging such crazy old words as mutiny into the talk whenever I'm around.
Boy, he should be in a museum stuffed alongside of Captain Bly. He says there's none of us in the family fit to take over his job.
There's a laugh. He's got this boat and he'll never let go.
But maybe I'll go up to his cabin one of these nights and tell him we'd get along all right if he'd just quit riding me. Maybe tonight.
That's all, George. Well, now that doesn't sound exactly like a mutineer thinking of murder.
A boy planning an attack with a knife in one hand and a gaff in the other.
Booksy, I think we'd better dig out the real facts of what happened fast before something else like this happens again.
It's dark, George.
Easy. Why don't you look out for the rope?
I'll do.
Well, it's not such a tidy boat, is it, for all the big talk?
No, it's not.
Thief, grief.
Run down, rusty at the seams.
Here we are.
Can you see Lomago?
Yeah, he's in there all right. His cabin. Wait a second.
This is his best care, George.
Quiet. The captain's on the bunk. The other cabin. It's sound asleep.
It's against the law, probably, what we're doing.
George, what are you...
I expected to ask you, but while we're cutting corners, save the time checking the city for an official copy.
George, right in front of us. Record of proceedings maritime commission.
Did you get it in full? Why, George?
Come on, come on. Start to work.
Federal court jurisdiction concerning the death at sea of James Lomago of Portuguese code.
We should have waked him up and just plain asked him.
Can't you find anything new, George?
Joe Murphy didn't say much at the hearing. Saw the captain swing his shimmy, caught sight of the knife in the kid's hand.
You know, we're the same as we already are.
They'd had trouble, all right. Captain had already hit shimmy once, smashed his wrist with a hook the afternoon before.
What?
Yeah, the kid was horsing around. Only the tuna hooks were flying.
The captain said somebody might have got his eyes torn out.
Oh.
But the facts? I'm afraid they died of pneumonia in the Nellowbrook scene.
With Joe Murphy gone with...
Well?
Um, captain, we...
You know, you know, I have a sort of premonition you might be down, Mr. Valentine.
Not so?
Yeah. Left out the things you might want to see.
Oh, the... Jimmy's death, sure.
After so much bad manners and waving of the emotions up at the house, he was a troublemaker, I guess you could see.
Just like your sorry brother Johnny, yes.
You seem to have been a little rough with Jimmy the day before his death.
Oh, that, yes. Too bad.
There's no space on a tuna boat for little boy things for horsing around.
Too dangerous.
Yeah, no. And besides, everything has to be neat and tidy.
Dabbing to get rid of such a person as Jimmy in self-defense is just one of them things.
We mustn't blame him for his weakness.
Not everyone can live on the strong moral plane, but a man...
That's the general idea of what I want you to...
Yeah, captain, I'm beginning to understand why you knocked that drink out of Johnny's hand earlier tonight.
Why you spout so much so righteously, why you slept so heavily in there, why the family's boat here is in such a mess.
To put it mildly, the good, gray, patriot, can't stand up straight, can he?
And boy, you've had enough to float a...
Get off my ship. Get out of here, I won't listen to you.
This is my ship. Get out of here.
Self-defense, self-defense.
But Johnny, the trouble started a day earlier.
Jimmy got his wrist smashed and must have been pretty sore at the old boy.
So said, how come you told me Jimmy was carrying a knife and a gap?
See, that is so, he was.
But with a wrist like that, wouldn't it be a little hard to carry anything?
You're sure he wasn't just carrying a knife like Joe Murphy said?
See, I think that is right, see.
Which is right?
So said, you want to agree with me, don't you?
Well, of course. Why not, Mr. Valentine?
No matter what I say, no matter what anybody says.
He's not much of a witness, I'm afraid.
But say, he didn't used to say, the gap.
Where'd you get that idea, Nutt?
Yeah, that's what I mean.
The story's being added to.
To make the self-defense even stronger.
But why?
Sometimes self-defense is a way of committing murder, Johnny.
You mean the captain's been coaching Nutty here?
Yeah, justifying himself.
I do not understand.
There was a motive for Jimmy's death, wasn't there, Johnny?
Oh, sure. But the captain thinks nobody's good enough to take over the boat from him.
That boat's worth a lot. The man who runs it gets most of it.
Family ownership doesn't mean much when there aren't any men left.
Jimmy and I always had different ideas for it, new ideas.
Mr. Valentine, look. Here, look at this.
Yeah, a gun, huh?
Revolver, it's loaded and it's brand new.
That's why I chased down here looking for you.
Nutty found it in the captain's room tonight.
The captain? Why would he buy it?
Nobody else is going to attack him.
Maybe he thinks you are.
What? Oh, look, I've tried to figure this whole thing out.
It's driven me crazy. I wrote letters like mad trying to locate Joe Murphy myself.
I asked questions, but I couldn't.
The captain.
Here, give me that thing.
No, no, why should I?
I thought for one minute he really meant to kill my brother.
What are you doing down there?
I told you to get out of here.
Johnny, I said give me that gun.
Bad get out. You and that yellow belly there.
You sour thing.
Johnny, take it easy.
Afraid of a fight, every one of you.
Shut up, will you?
Go on, hit me. Both of you.
Listen, you see how he does it?
I'm going to shoot you down with my bare fist.
No, no, you can't. Not this time.
Johnny.
Now let him have the gun. I'm not afraid of a gun.
I told you to shut up a long time ago.
There won't be any self-defense this time.
Give me that gun back, Nutty.
Sure, Johnny, sure I will.
You missed the captain with your first shot. He's down now. Go ahead, shoot him.
What?
Yeah, you heard me.
There won't be any self-defense, murder.
You'll have to do it in cold blood.
Sure, it's...
You've been out for a while, Sonny, on who goes home.
On who's been waking up the sleeping dogs around here.
You trying to be funny?
You're the one who primes so sad with that gaffe story, aren't you, Johnny?
Just to make it look like the captain was desperately padding the evidence.
You have to be the one.
The skipper had seen the official record.
He knew about the smashed wrist that made it impossible.
Mr. Valentine, listen...
Yes, Johnny.
And that broken wrist also made it impossible for Jimmy to write in his diary on his last day.
I guess a handwriting expert can tell me who wrote that last entry.
The entry that made it seem so unlikely that Jimmy could have been really thinking about mutiny.
But everybody knew how Omega treated Jimmy.
Let's just believe what we know.
That Jimmy was a troublemaker, a mutineer, who was killed accidentally in self-defense.
Only it gave you the bright idea of duplicating the stunt with malice aforethought.
I've been trying to find Joe Murphy to learn the facts of the...
You have not.
You've been making up the facts, capitalizing on the captain's feelings about a tragedy.
You've been doing it for six months.
Ever since you knew the only witness was dead.
No, no.
I had to know, Buster, because you told me you kept writing to locate him.
And yet some place I remember the postman, the mailman himself,
saying that Captain Omega was the only guy around here who ever wrote to strange foreign places.
All right, smart boy.
Middle of the...
Jimmy, that...
I guess Portuguese coal won't be having an ambitious new tuna skipper for some time, Johnny.
Jimmy was the same as Johnny.
Yes, he was the same.
Skipper, Johnny admitted that he was working for a chance to kid you.
Now you'll keep the boat, Captain.
That's what you want.
It's what people say I want.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, I know, I know.
You won't defend yourself, will you?
Too proud.
You'll just get secretly drunk and beat your head over the rail and haunt yourself with how you once hit a man.
My fist is so big, it happens so sudden, I...
And you won't admit that you really hurt yourself every time you lash out and say there aren't any more men in the family,
trying to smother that conscience of yours,
the same oversized conscience Johnny kept preying on.
You won't ever admit how lonely you can get being the captain,
being responsible for the family,
or how close you got to wanting to shoot yourself over the guilt that really shouldn't have been yours.
Uh, Mr. Valentine, the poor man over there plays excellent dance music.
So sad.
It's such a funny name.
Wouldn't you two like to dance, Miss Brooks?
Yes, I'd love to.
But it's all over now, isn't it, Captain?
Yes, yes, of course.
Don't worry.
I, uh, I only wish you knew something about tuna fishing, Mr. Valentine.
We could use a man like you in the Lemago family.
The Lemago Family
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Tonight's adventure of George Valentine has been brought to you by Standard Oil Company of California
on behalf of independent Chevron gas stations and standard stations throughout the West.
Robert Bailey has starred as George, with Virginia Gregg as Brooksy.
Let George Do It is written by David Victor and Jackson Gillis and directed by Don Clark.
Francis X. Bushman was heard as Lemago, Walter Burke as Johnny, Elliot Reed as So Sad,
Gwen Delano as Mrs. Jewel, and Harry Bartel as The Mailman.
The music was composed and presented by Eddie Dunstetter, your announcer, John Heaston.
Listen again next week, same time, same station, to Let George Do It.
This is the Mutual Don Lee Broadcasting System.